Sunday, March 15, 2015

Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer

Indulgent amount of exposition for a metaphor about the environment. (At least that's what I gathered this was supposed to be.) Lines like: "journals had piled up in the lighthouse because on some level most came, in time, to recognize the futility of language....words were such a sorrowful disappointment,so inadequate an expression of both the finite and the infinite" seem out of place in a story that takes three books to tell its tale.

I just can't believe I spend so much time reading these stories for such a conclusion. I know a lot of people really loved them but they were not for me. I did not enjoy a single moment of it. I kept waiting for it to get better but all that I was left with was a lingering sense of disappointment.

One thing that bothered me quite a bit was that the choice of character names could have been a little more subtle: Saul, Gloria, Cynthia, Severance, Control, Grace...

"Don't you get tired after a while?...Of always moving forward but never reaching the end?" Yes. Yes, I do.